Soak Up the Sun

And somehow, it’s 90 degrees in Petersburg. I truly didn’t ever think the day would come when I would be missing the colder temperatures, and I don’t think I am at the moment, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I start whining about the humidity in a few days. Until then though, I have relished in walking to Smolny in a tank top. Thank god I brought a few pair of shorts, because I anticipate whipping them out... tomorrow. Besides the fact that it was hard to breathe walking outside today, the sun felt heavenly on my skin as I crossed the bridge back home after classes finished. I’m glad that Russia experiences all four seasons, but my goodness are they extreme. The winters are usually severe (except this past one), and I get the sense that these last three weeks in Russia are going to be жаркие (there is hope I may not come back home ghostly pale)!

Along similar lines, it's light out most hours of the day now. Today the sunset is scheduled to BEGIN at 22:38, but I think I went to bed around 23:30 the other night without it being completely dark out. My friend Hunter stayed up the other night until it started to get light out, which was apparently around 4 am. It is how you would expect: incredibly weird - especially considering the fact that it was dark around 4:30 pm and the sun didn’t rise until after 10 am when we first arrived here at the end of January. Despite the fact that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to sleep in in the morning, I enjoy all the light. It totally messes up your sense of time, but in a good way. You think it’s 3 pm when it’s really 8 pm, and as a result, you have more energy to do things. It makes going out a lot more fun, and it makes me feel more comfortable walking around at night in the sunlight as opposed to in the dark. Needless to say, I’m pumped for the white nights, when the sun virtually never sets. The sun may never have set on the British navy, but it doesn't set for a while every summer in Petersburg, and it is going to be AWESOME. 

This past weekend was pretty busy. On Saturday during the day Jackie and I took the metro several stops up the blue line from Gostiny Dvor with the intent of finding a souvenir market. What we found turned out to be more of a serious junk yard/flea market extravaganza. There were stands and stands of people that extended far back into a dirt filled open space. Can’t describe it in a more pretty way than that. For the people who didn’t have there own stands, they laid tarps out on the dirt with all their items on top. These items, however, looked like they came out of garages and storage bins. I hesitate to call it all crap, because I’m sure some of it was actually valuable, but for all intents and purposes, what we walked through was virtually piles and piles of random crap. There was so much of it too; your eyes were all over the place, taking in Soviet pins, rusty spoons, clothes, roller blades, books, pictures, movies, cassettes, more clothes, shoes, etc... Basically any knick-knack that you could imagine. Jackie and I did our rounds and concluded that no, these were not the souvenirs we had in mind (I did see a hollowed out shark skin though). 

By the time I got home, it was almost time to head right back out again. For those who signed up, we were to meet at 5:30 pm to see the play Поздняя Любовь (“Late Love”) by Alexander Ostrovsky. I went into the play thinking that after almost four months in Russia that I would be pleasantly surprised as to how much I would understand of this play. I mean, unlike a ballet or opera, these actors will use gestures and have intonation. That should help me understand, right? NAHT. Forty-five seconds  into the first scene and I had already accepted defeat. I got the general gist of the play (a mother and her two sons live in an apartment which is being rented out to a father and daughter - the daughter is their house maid - the daughter falls in love with one of the sons - that son is a cad - something something something loan - something something something black mail - something something something the debt has been paid), but definitely not any of the important details. I’m happy I went though; I hadn’t seen a play in over a year, and Ostrovsky is supposed to be quite the famous playwright. 

The next day was spent at Tsarskoye Selo with the group. We had an excursion to the park and to Catherine palace, and we took a private bus there. Because the weather has been so nice lately, the park was so sunny and everything was in bloom. The flower beds were fully occupied and decorated, and the grass was super green. Poor Meg was sneezing the whole time because of her allergies, but I’m sure she’d agree with me that walking through the park was gorgeous. Eventually our guide gave us a nice tour of the palace, which reminded me of Versailles in Paris (which it should have considering the Catherine palace is supposed to be modeled after Versailles... or wait.... is that Peterhof?). There was a giant hall of mirrors which shined brilliantly with gold (at this point, can we expect anything less?), and apparently, you can actually rent that room out for parties. Elton John actually played a concert in that room a few years ago.

Around 3:30 we had a late lunch not too far from the palace. I decided to go back to the Alexander Palace by myself, so I broke off from the group at 4 in order to get to the palace before it closed at 5. It was nice to see the Alexander palace interiors again, especially since I have reread some chapters from Massie’s book since the last time I was there. It was a quick visit, for I left my camera in a locker, and when I got done I walked back to one of the main streets and caught a marshrutka back to the city center. 

Tomorrow a bunch of us are headed to Peterhof again, but this time all the fountains will be on. I still have the Nabokov museum, the Dostoevsky museum and the Alexander Nevsky monastery left on my to-do list. I’m going to try to see them in these remanding three weeks, but in all honesty, I may not. I’m so content with everything I’ve done, and I’m totally whipped out. We’ll see though. Finals are next week, and after that we have the last week in Russia free of classes. And my internet will have run out by then, so I’ll need to find something to do. 

The Unwinding Cable Car

So, apparently my blogs haven't been able to show up against the black backdrop on the website. Sorry about that! Hopefully it's fixed now... 

Anyways, here is what I started writing when I got back from Tallinn and Helsinki last week. This is where I left off: 

I am currently drained both physically and mentally. I turned in my Cold War final earlier this afternoon, which should be ashamed to even call itself a final exam, and I just finished the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy. I know that most of the male population tends to automatically tune out after those two words are uttered by any female, which, I feel is a battle I cannot fight, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t care if you watch the show, but you gotta believe me when I say that the pain I’m feeling right now is REAL. Have you ever gotten attached to TV or book characters? I mean REALLY attached? I feel that I am the perfect subject for any author or director; I’m not that analytical enough to see characters as simply characters, and as a result, I feel every emotion an author or director would want their audience to feel. I am the perfect pawn. I get lost in shows and stories, and my god, I think I sincerely believe that these characters really DO exist somewhere in this universe, and my god do I love them as if I’ve known them for years. 

Last night at 9m (EST), the world said goodbye to one of TV’s best beloved characters, Christina Yang (yes, I’m actually going to do this right now). I don’t think it’s possible for me to describe to you what watching Grey’s Anatomy has meant to me over the past seven years (= my adolescence and young adulthood), so I won’t even try, but AHH. I feel as if I have just said farewell to a good friend. I’m sure my host mom is convinced that I’m on drugs after hearing all the weeping and laughing and “OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD?! OH MY GOD!!!”s that have seeped through my wall and into the kitchen over the past hour...

On second though, I probably shouldn’t have decided to blog in such an emotionally crippled state. 

Apologies, apologies. You probably want to hear about Finland, or maybe even my adventures in St. Petersburg, considering that’s what you really signed up for when you decided to check my blog out in the first place (you poor, poor soul).

So, Helsinki. We took the 7:30 am ferry to the Finnish capital, which took about two hours. The ferry that we took ended up looking like a cruise ship, and we sat in a cafeteria and watched a hockey game as our ferry sped through thick fog over the short distance across the Gulf of Finland. 

When we arrived we took a tram to the center of the city. Unfortunately, our hostel wasn’t too close by. We ended up walking in a circle for 15 minutes before we were able to orient ourselves and find the right way. Our hostel, Cheapsleep, ended up being a 45 minute walk from the city center, but I’m sure it could have been worse. 

I’m confident that the overcast weather influenced my opinions of Helsinki because I found it a little too modern and grey for my taste. It was such a contrast to Tallinn and Petersburg, but I’m glad we went! I don’t know how big the city actually is, but it didn’t seem too daunting from the one day that I was there. On the way to the hostel we walked past the opera house, the parliament building, the main train station, a contemporary art museum, the national museum of Finland and through a giant green park that outlined a bay of sorts which reminded me of Baxter Boulevard (somewhat). 

One thing I noticed in particular was that there were runners and bikers EVERYWHERE. The sidewalks have separate walking and biking lanes, and chances that we walked past someone in fancy athletic clothes, black spandex and neon nike sneaks was extremely high (I was totally into it). We walked past what looked like a giant race tent, but as the day went on I began to think that this is how many people actually run and bike through Helsinki on a regular basis. Actually, now that I think of it, most of the people we saw there were fit. Good for them!

After we got our things settled at the hostel and a sandwich from the grocery store below (this hostel was more legit, thankfully), we set back out to where we came. Adam broke off on his own, and Sean and I headed back through the park. We ended up going to a Lutheran church which just happens to be built literally into a rock. Check out these pictures below. 

Then we walked a little further out of the city into a more neighborhood like setting with the intent of finding one of the beaches nearby. We walked past a pretty cemetery and strolled through that first. By the time we finally got to the beach, Sean and I were exhausted. We ended up on the pavement next to the beach, and lay on our jackets in the sun. Sean definitely fell asleep, and I lay there with my eyes closed for at least an hour. I desperately wanted to go back to the hostel to take a nap, but on second thought I'm happy it was far enough away to prevent me from actually doing that. When we slowly got up, we made our way back to the city center. The neighborhoods we walked through were quiet, but clean and tidy. Apartment buildings are tall, and there were parks every so distance away from each other. There was an abundance of cafes and bars all around, but unlike Russia, everything was super expensive because they use euros (coming back to the US is going to be hard - what is the US dollar anyway? Do I even know anymore? [Steve Kautz, you will have to give me a lecture]). We walked through the city center, which included a handful of tall malls and eventually made our way to the harbor. The sections of the city we walked through later in the afternoon were super nice; they definitely had a luxurious shopping air about them... if that makes any sense. 

Walking around the harbor reminded me of Portland. It didn’t smell like Portland, nor did it come anywhere near close to how quaint, charming and hip Portland is, but I walked on docks past the water, and there were fishing boats. We crossed the harbor and climbed a hill to the Uspenski church (cathedral?). It was closed so we couldn’t go inside, but it had a nice view at the top. 

Shortly after we met up with Adam and went to dinner. It seemed like we all weren’t too pleased with the ruble to euro conversion rate, so we tried finding what we thought would be the cheapest place for dinner: Pizza Hut. I think the one and only time I had actually gone to a pizza hut before then was when Tommy Ryan’s mom Marybeth took us out when we were on a play date... in first grade. Anyways, it wasn’t cheap, but it was REAL PIZZA. Hallelujah! And the waitresses smiled! When they said welcome or thank you, they actually looked genuine! I had no idea how much I missed a friendly face, regardless if it was fake or not. Russians may be proud of their honesty and their lack of smiley appearance, but I am 110% American and I don’t care if people are fake about being happy or not. I can’t tell! 

When we were done with dinner, we all went our separate ways. Sean went to walk around some more, Adam went to check out a Lutheran church, and I hopped on what I hoped was the correct tram back to the hostel. I know, I know. I am beyond lame. My one night in Helsinki was spent from under the covers of my hostel bed reading Edgar Allen Poe's horror stories. Part of me wishes that I had that energy or spirit of being young without any cares in the world to go out and party until 4 am, but ehh. That sounds like so much effort. And I was tired. And full. And running low on euros. So that was that, and I was perfectly content to be out cold before midnight. 

Sean, Adam and I barely made it onto the ferry to Tallinn the next morning. We checked in at the ticket booth and after a few minutes of walking on the platform, I wondered aloud where everybody else was. The answer was that they were already on the ferry, which was about to leave the port in a few minutes. We made it to the ferry on time, but I cannot tell you how little excitement and positive adrenaline I get out of close calls. In fact, I hate any sense of adventure that could possibly be derived from anything along the lines of missing a ferry/plane/bus/[insert transportation] (I’m going to have grey hair by the time I’m 30). Ohhh the STRESS!

The ferry ride back to Tallinn was pleasant. When we got back though, we had a lot of time to kill before our bus went back to Petersburg at 5:45 pm. So Adam and I spent an hour and a half at a cute little Mornings-in-Paris type cafe, where I had a hot cocoa, a lemon poppy seed roll and read more Poe. We then spent another few hours at a McDonalds, and then walked to the bus station, where we waited for another hour or two. Five minutes before we were supposed to leave our bus showed up. There was no sign telling us which platform to get to or anything. I was radiating a lot of panicky vibes which I’m sure Adam and Sean appreciated. Luckily, we made it home around midnight, and I was fast asleep by 2 am. 

All in all, I’m so glad we took the trip. It was a lot for a few days, but I think we got a significant amount out of it. And now I get to check off two capitals on my travel list: Tallinn ✓ Helsinki ✓ Ура! 

Send Me On My Way

Okay! Tallinn and Helsinki! The trip was, in short, exhausting and awesome. I traveled to the capitals of Estonia and Finland with Sean and Adam, and they were excellent company. I love spending time with my girlfriends, but there is something to be said about spending a lot of time with guys and guys only. I certainly felt a lot safer and a lot cooler to be traveling with two twenty-one year olds, despite the fact that they’re both skinny twigs that look younger than 21 (sorry Sean and Adam). 

Getting back to the trip. It started this past thursday when we all hopped on a bus to Tallinn at 5:45 pm. I was really nervous about being carsick for six hours, and I only had one dramamine left, so as soon as I got settled I closed my eyes and made sure to not move and shift around too much (motion sickness is a CURSE). I listened to my iPod and faded in and out of a sleepy daze. We stopped at the border obviously, and we had to show our passports to a lady with the scariest pink nail-polished talons ever. She ended up keeping my migration card, and for a second I was like, uhh, why does she have one of my documents. Sean?! Adam?! Is this normal?! Yes, it was (this program has ingrained in my mind a paranoia about keeping my documents with me at ALL times). 

We finally arrived in Tallinn at around midnight. We caught one of the last buses running to the city center, and from there we proceeded to walk in one big giant circle around where we wanted to be. It was dark out, and we had no idea where we were going. I whipped out the screenshot I had taken of where Google maps told me to go, but that wasn’t very helpful, so we used a combination of our intuition and street maps to eventually find Old Town, the center of Tallinn - exactly where we wanted to be. If there is one thing that I have taken away from my trips to Tallinn and Helsinki, it’s a little regained faith in the ability of people of my generation to navigate their ways through an unknown city without the help of smart phones. 

We finally found our hostel, Mr. Ryokan’s house, around 1 am. This hostel turned out to be some dude’s (he was a dude in every sense of the word) three room apartment; it was made up of a hallway with a few appliances to constitute a kitchen, his room, a bathroom, a living room, and then another bedroom, which you could only get to by crossing this one living room. The apparent owner of Mr. Ryokan’s, Luke, looked to be in his late twenties. He was very tall, attractive and spoke English like any one of us. We went into the living room where we paid (around 20 euros for two nights for each of us), and he whipped out a tourist map to show us all the places to check out the next day. I remember noticing that he held the pen weird, and the length of his fingers reminded me of the project I did on Marfan’s disease in Jonah Rosenfield’s class my freshman year of high school. We asked him a few questions genuinely out of curiosity. Luke moved to Tallinn six years ago, apparently because he took a vacation - “a really good vacation” to Tallinn. He asked us where we were all from, and when he said that he was from Connecticut, I exclaimed, naturally, “oh! I go to Connecticut College,” to which he responded, totally nonchalantly, “yes I know. I saw that on Facebook... (looks up at us all)... I like to know who’s coming...” Heh... 

We were in the bedroom off the living room the first night, and we slept in bunk beds. There were no curtains, and at exactly 9 am someone upstairs started playing the piano. I guess that’s what you get for 10 euros a night! It was fine though, mom and dad. The door had a secure lock, and Luke was friendly. Would I go back there? Probably not, but it was all apart of the experience. We got up around 9 the next day. It was overcast and the forecast said it was going to rain, but luckily it held off until late afternoon. I packed my camera, hat and other items in my bag and we set off to explore. 

Tallinn, and I can’t stress this enough, is absolutely adorable and charming. Old Town is super small (we definitely didn’t need more than a day there) and enclosed by a kremlin fortress, but all the streets are narrow and cobble stoned and cute as all hell. The buildingss have really old doors and their architecture mimics some medieval style in their appearance (I think I just made that up?). Old Town was very quiet, and the streets were filled mostly with tourists. From the locals we did see though, they were dressed infinitely better than any Russian, and were that much more attractive as well. People strolled in the middle of the streets at a leisurely pace, and we followed them in and out of side streets as we walked past tourist shops, bars, restaurants, and residential houses. 

First on our agenda was to check out the three spots in the city with birds eye views. It didn’t take us long to get there, only stopping to take pictures and to try and decipher the street names in Estonia, which looked like absolute gibberish to me. Estonian also seems much harder than Russian. We eventually climbed a hill (haven’t experienced a hill in MONTHS) and past many castle towers before we ended up on a patio with, oh my god, spectacular views of Old Town. You could see towers and the tops of churches, which looked like they had a mix of both Russian Orthodox and Christian influences. The roofs of practically all the buildings are a burnt reddish-orange that contrasted nicely with the cream colored bodies of the buildings. Tallinn is an extremely old city (I want to say 11th century?), and it certainly shows. At certain points I shared with Sean and Adam that Tallinn is what I imagine parts of Scotland, Amsterdam and/or Copenhagen to look like. It was so different from Petersburg it was overwhelming, but in the best way. There were so many times when I said how much I already loved Tallinn. I’m not sure I knew where Tallinn was until a few years ago, but I’m so glad I went. It’s a gem of a city, and I would recommend anyone traveling around Eastern Europe to make it a pitstop. 

After we saw three different views of Old Town from three different high points, we made our way through a park which was the ahh, the greenest green. We walked past the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, the pink parliament building and a few statues. We only passed a few people; Old Town seemed very quaint and quiet that Friday morning, if not always. We ended up in Freedom Square next (think protests and the dissolution of the Soviet Union), and walked through more cobble stoned streets with churches and tavern looking cafes and restaurants. 

Later in the afternoon we continued to explore by leaving Old Town and exiting the kremlin. We wandered to the harbor and found ourselves on the Roof of Linnahall, which according to our tourist map was “originally built by the Soviets for the 1980 Olympic regatta[.] This tremendous concrete edifice also served as a defense structure in case the Finns attacked the USSR by sea. Occasionally Tallinn youth gather on the roof to have a beer and watch the sunset before a heavy night of clubbing.” We just wandered in and our of the graffitied concrete walls and eventually sat down on some exposed stairs to gaze at the ocean. There was a helicopter launch pad right in front of us, and as if on cue, a helicopter landed on it about a minute later. 

After that we went to a park and sat on a bench. Although all we really did was walk around, we were dog tired after a few hours. We sat on the bench for at least 45 minutes as the sun disappeared and reappeared from under the clouds. I had this weird urge to read Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories a few weeks ago (I had until that point only read The Cask of Amontillado [thanks, Mr. Hoy!], and my Nabokov professor won’t shut up about how Poe is the closest thing Americans have to Pushkin [are you serious Valerii?]), and by some odd coincidence, Jackie just happened to bring a book of Poe’s short stories with her abroad. So I ended up reading a few stories from The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Tales on that park bench. Weird, I know, but you know what/who’s even weirder? EDGAR ALLEN POE. That guy was messed up, but obviously brilliant. As much as his stories gave me the creeps, I haven’t read a short story since, wow, probably Guy de Maupassant in my French classes in high school (great choice, Madame!), and I forgot how nice it was to read something short, but complete like that. 

Sensing that we were all at the same energy level, we walked around the city with the intent of making it back to our hostel for a nap. Sean decided to walk around (by this time it had started to rain), but Adam and I didn’t feel like moving. An hour and a half later Adam and I set out for Hell Hunt bar and restaurant, where we were to meet Sean at 6 pm. Hell Hunt is apparently one of Tallinn’s most popular bars, and for good reason. It seems like a chill place where a lot of locals go to have a good time. We ordered the recommended dark beer, and for dinner, Sean and I ordered a pesto ham pasta dish (yum!). Our waiter was a young, tattooed guy who spoke with a slight British/Australian accent? It’s incredible; in both Tallinn and Helsinki most everybody speaks English, Russian and either Estonian or Finnish (I can’t even master one foreign language!). We spent the next two hours shamelessly gossiping and sharing stories. We had to wake up early to catch a ferry to Helsinki the next morning, so I didn’t drink that much, but we all had enough to say silly things like, “SEAN TELL US A SECRET” or, oh boy, to whip out the would you rathers. The conversations we had, I’m sure, could be overheard at any middle school boy or girls sleep over party.  

And that was it. We went back to the hostel and crawled into bed, which just happened to be an unfolded couch in the living room this time, which was also occupied by two separate Japanese travelers... Awkward. 

But that was Tallinn in a nut shell. This is already a long post, so I’m going to take a break and write about Helsinki at another time. Stay tuned! 

Good Arms vs. Bad Arms

Okay, I know that I still have to write about my trip to Tallinn and Estonia, and I apologize for not having gotten it all down already (I have “finals”... [what?]), but I went to a lecture by Mark Danner last night, who, for some unknown reason, just happens to be in Petersburg for the week visiting Smolny, and I desperately need to share how AMAZING it was. 

Who is Mark Danner you ask? Mark Danner is a rather famous journalist, reporter and expert on foreign and domestic policy. He has written for the New Yorker, reported from Iraq, and he’s published several books. He is a professor at Bard and at UC Berkeley, and he ended up talking to the Smolny community (mostly Americans) for two hours last night about the War on Terror, among many other things. Mark Danner is also an expert on torture, and we discussed one of his pieces on torture extensively in my human rights government class last spring; hence, why I practically fell out of my chair when Mike emailed us about his lecture. 

I know it’s not really a big deal, but I am still so energized about the talk. Above all though, I was incredibly starstruck. Although I find myself slowly but surely challenging the opinions of my professors and other authority figures (I have a problem with believing authority without question), I am still very much smitten with anyone who knows a whole lot about topics I’m interesting in, or that which I wish I knew more about. 

In addition to his thoughts on the War on Terror, Mark Danner touched on the Light Footprint foreign policy idea, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, DRONES, and, to my joy, torture under the Bush administration. I frantically reread through the paper I wrote on torture last year right before his lecture to refresh my memory, and at the end of his lecture when the question period opened, I mustered up the courage to ask him (without stuttering!) what his thoughts were on a truth commission and of the outlook for any transitional justice for the torture committed under Bush. In sum, he said that a truth commission would be a welcomed, but that it doesn't seem so likely at the moment considering the initiation would have to come from the government itself (among other things). He answered other questions regarding the morality of drones, counter insurgencies, Edward Snowden, and how, if possible, he saw the War on Terror coming to an end. I thought that Mark Danner is obviously highly intelligent, down to earth, and overall just a wicked cool guy, to put it lightly. 

I waited to shake his hand and thank him again in person after the lecture ended. He remembered my name from earlier (he asked me my name after I asked him the question- *swoon*), and asked me about how I liked my time abroad. He said that he was happy to meet me. It’s a really good thing that Mark Danner is bald and overweight, because I probably would have proposed to him at the end of it all, haha. I hope I end up with someone whose combined intelligence and humility are on par with all the numerous professors and people like Mark Danner (ANYONE from my summer at UC Berkeley, for one) I’ve met over the years... 

I think I underestimated how much I missed a good thought-provoking lecture (in English). Of course, I’m challenged every day in a very academic way because I struggle to communicate in a different language, but I guess I’ve been craving such a debate by someone who isn’t one of my peers for a long time. It inspired me to read more of Mark Danner’s books, and by the time the discussion ended last night, I found that I had made a mental list of all these political topics I feel I need to read about. AHHH, how REFRESHING! 

On another note, I'll try to finish my Cold War final soon and write about my trip to Estonia and Finland. 

Towers

 Picking up where I left off...

On Friday we went to the Kremlin after breakfast. Oh yes. Similar to seeing St. Basil’s the day before, walking along, past and through that red fortress was unreal. I think it would have been more mind-blowing if I actually knew a lot about Moscow’s history, but, I mean, it’s the symbol of Soviet and present day Russia, and it was epic. Inside the Kremlin are a handful of churches, the Tsar canon (I don’t know background), the Tsar bell (I don’t know background), and some official looking buildings (where’s Putin at?). Everything is so medieval. The walls of the churches are filled with images that you’d see on icons, and the lighting is just dark enough to set that old, charming mood. In one church there are tombs of great princes and grand princesses from the 15th and 16th centuries. I wish I had more to say about the Kremlin, but it was all so overwhelming with images that I couldn’t quite understand, and therefore appreciate fully. Still all cool though! 

As we all made our way in clumps to the London Grill, a bunch of us found ourselves in Red Square facing St. Basils. Naturally, we all proceeded to take pictures upon pictures of ourselves in from of the cathedral. I absolutely and shameless overindulged. 

After lunch, a few of us stopped into Krispy Kreme for donuts, which was right next door, and then we broke off into smaller groups to do our own thing. Hunter, Jacob, Adam, Sean, Will and I took the metro with the intent of finding the Bulgakov apartment museum. Mikhail Bulgakov wrote “Master and Margarita,” which is a Soviet satire that involves the Devil’s visit to Moscow. It’s a really popular book, and we read it last fall for my Russian Novel course. Unfortunately, we only had about a week to read it, and I had to blow through it without really taking the time I would have liked to in order to fully understand it. I enjoyed it though, because it’s flat out CRAZY (in terms of the plot and the characters), so I was definitely in favor of seeing the Bulgakov museum. The museum was really just a few rooms (it was originally an apartment, after all), with manuscripts, posters, knick-knacks, and a cafe inside. We didn’t spend much time in there; we simply did a few swoops to see it all, and on our way out we took a few pictures of the statues of a few of the characters from the book which were standing outside the entrance. 

Sticking with the Master and Margarita theme, after we left the museum we walked a few blocks to Patriarch Pond, a little park with a manmade duck pond in the middle of a busy neighborhood, and the setting for the opening chapter of the novel. We all lined ourselves in a row on a hill of grass next to the pond and lied (lay?) on our backs, basking in the sun, for a good 45 minutes. We watched the ducks and swans circle their little duck/swan huts in the middle of the lake and people-watched. When we started to get up and move, we left the pond in search of another park to play frisbee, but we didn’t get too far before deciding to go back to the hostel. The sun had drained us, and we had been walking all day. I was personally overjoyed with the decision, and when we got back to the hostel I curled up under the covers and dozed in and out of the unconscious before it was time to go to dinner. 

After dinner a bunch of us walked to a pub called “Scotland Yard.” I had a scrumptious tequila sunrise that didn’t do anything to me, and then we left for the hostel a few hours later. When we got back we played cards; we played a game called “durak” which translates to “idiot” or “fool” in english. I’m sure there’s a similar version in the states that I was unaware of? Anyways, I had never played before, so of course I was the durak for like the first three rounds before I could pick up on how to play. 

The next day we went to the Tretyakov Gallery, which I enjoyed a ton more than I thought I would. I guess I had anticipated that by being so overwhelmed by all the art at the Hermitage and the Russian Museum in Petersburg that I was going to lack any energy to appreciate the art here, but I was so surprised at all the famous Russian artists and paintings I had seen in the past that were held in the Tretyakov Gallery. For example, I saw probably the most famous portrait of Dostoevsky, the Tree Bogatrys, and that stunning painting of Ivan the Terrible holding his son, whom he had just murdered. There were so many moments when I turned one of the corners of a hall and found myself in front of some painting I had seen a bagillion times in my textbook or on the internet. Oh! There’s Chekhov! I just saw you on Pintrest yesterday! Oh! There’s Valentin Serov’s “Girl with Peaches”! I wrote an essay on you about a month ago! But of course, like the freak that I am, there was one painting I had been hunting for throughout my time in the gallery. I was searching for a Serov painting of my dear Tsar, and I just about cockadoodledooed when I finally caught a glimpse of it. Hollaaaaaaa.

After lunch, a bunch of us took the metro countless stops away to a souvenir market, where I bought a few things. There were a handful of lines of stands full of Soviet pins, army knives, shot glasses, nesting dolls, scarves, painted eggs, wooden spoons, paintings, etc... I literally could have spent hours there, but we were in a big group and we naturally came together after a while to head out. I would have come out with a lot more things had the vendors not come after me like vultures. I know I’m a very naive, vulnerable (wow... is there a reason why the word “vulnerable” and “vultures” look the same? I swear to you that I am not high) tourist, but I swear, if you come up to me and start talking to me and put the SLIGHTEST pressure on me I’m outta there. I can’t handle people selling me things. I feel terribly bad when I refuse, not to mention the fact that virtually anyone could sell me anything. No, that’s a lie what am I talking about. I’m terribly stingy. 

Having a little time to kill before dinner, we took the metro around the brown circle line to VDNKn, where the all union exhibition center is located. What does that mean exactly? Well, there are lots of statues of your typical Soviet man and woman, as well as famous individuals positioned around this park which revolves around a giant statue to Soviet space successes. It was pretty cool actually, minus the fact that Soviet communism and propaganda of any sort makes me want to gag. Bleh. 

Before we knew it, it was time to go. Time to go to dinner, time to go back home to Petersburg. After dinner we got ice cream at BK and then made our way to the train station, where we boarded our night train. It was weird to arrive back in Petersburg the next morning, for it felt refreshing like I was returning home. I enjoyed my time in Moscow, but it felt so nice to come back to the city in Russia I know best. 

Ohh I don’t want to go back home! It’s official. I’ve become so used to this little place I’ve carved for myself here. I’m surrounded by amazing friends, my classes aren’t challenging, my host mom takes care of me, the ruble makes everything so much cheaper, I’m cozy inside my little history wonderland, and I’m far away from the problems I bolted away from when I boarded my flight to St. Petersburg at the end of January. Do I really want to stay here, or do I just want to prolong my return to reality? Probably both, but I don’t know. I hate change, and I feel like throwing a temper tantrum because it’s already May 6th. I can’t leave! What am I going to do without the people I see everyday? What’s going to happen to this sense of independence I’m gained? What am I going to do without being constantly distracted by the freshness and grandeur of everything all the time? 

More importantly, how the hell am I going to be able to return to Conn. I remember this one incident that took place in the fall of my sophomore year that has been replaying itself in my mind more often lately. I was at a party in Freeman, and I went to the bathroom to pee. When I got into the bathroom, there were two girls there in their party-going outfits with drinks in their hands. One of the girls was almost shouting, almost crying, almost laughing to the other one, ranting about how going abroad and coming back to college life has been so challenging. I just remember how stunned I was at how utterly dramatic it all seemed to me. Obviously all members of this interaction including myself were intoxicated, so I was being normal, drunk Liv, and probably over-exaggerating everything (it was probably a very heartfelt, normal conversation). In any case, I got back to the room I was in and laughed outrageously about what I had just interrupted in the bathroom. In retrospect, HOW DARE I judge them? Perhaps it was indeed funny and they were being silly, but I am totally going to sloppily and drunkenly cry to my friends about what happened to me while I was in Russia this upcoming year. Dear god I’m going to be a mess! I think one of the hardest parts will be reintegrating myself into a place that’s a) not a city of 5 million and b) that’s really only filled with 18-23 year olds. I’m constantly surrounded by people of all ages here, or at least I interact with them more than I would at Conn. I’m going to miss all the culture. All the random strangers I see in the metro. All the museums. All the buildings. All the stray dogs on Galernaya ulitsa. All the bridges. All the carefree nights. All the cyrillic. I’m going to miss my host mom, and I’m going to miss speaking Russian. I can’t bare the idea of forgetting all that I’ve learned. 

God damn, I can’t bare the idea of a lot of things. On the bright side, I do have a month and two days left to soak it all up before I fly home. This Thursday Sean, Adam and I are taking a bus to Tallinn, Estonia, where we’ll be for a full day before we take a ferry from Tallinn to Helsinki, where we’ll be until Sunday. I’m excited to get some traveling in, but I’m bummed I’m missing Victory Day in SPB. It seems like there will be a lot of cool parades and whatnot... OH WELL. 

Red

Back from Moscow! Where to begin? I’ll start with this: it was AWESOME. I kind of went into this trip expecting Moscow to be dreary and much less likable than Petersburg, but I was definitely surprised at how much I liked the city! With that said though, I was only there for a few days, and I never for a minute second-guessed my decision to study abroad in Petersburg over Moscow. My interests in Russia revolve around St. Petersburg, and I found that my bucket list for things to see in Moscow was a whole heck of a lot shorter than the one I have for Petersburg. In any case, I hope that someday I’ll be able to return to Moscow for a longer time. 

So I guess I’ll take this day by day. 

Wednesday: We all met at the Moscow Railway Station in Petersburg at 10 in order to board our night train. The days leading up to Wednesday were slow. I couldn’t wait to pack and I felt like a kid because of how excited I was to travel with everyone. One big family trip indeed... 

I enjoyed the night train. It was a bit disorientating to go to sleep and wake up in a completely different city. Part of me didn’t really believe I was in Moscow until I saw Red Square, but I definitely knew upon arrival that I wasn’t in Petersburg anymore.

Thursday: We had an early morning, but luckily I had slept fairly well the night before. Our first stop was check in at the Godzilla hostel (my sheets were green, hehe), where we dropped of all our bags in storage before we headed to breakfast not too far away. 

My first impressions of Moscow were what I had heard to expect: mainly that the city was big, grey, and full of tall, Soviet-looking buildings. It’s not as dreary as I just made it sound, but again, we had beautiful weather throughout the whole time we were there. The roads are designed for a lot of cars, and I started to understand why some people have said that Moscow is more of a car-oriented city, whereas St. Petersburg is much more walkable. 

Anyways, after breakfast (an interesting egg-jello cube with red and yellow peppers, kasha, and tea), we took the metro to the Kashirskaya stop, walking behind Mike and Elena like little ducklings following their parents, where we got off and headed towards Kolomenskoe, a big suburban park. The Moscow metro has a reputation of being pretty fabulous. I don’t think I was ever in a marble platform, but the metros did have chandeliers, intricate designs on the ceilings, some stain glass designs, cool statues, and interesting architecture (for example, in the Mendeleev metro stop there were chemical bond sculptures hanging from the ceilings). 

When we entered Kolomenskoe, it was like walking into spring. The grass was a luscious green, and there were dandelions everywhere. The trees were in the process of blooming, and the sun was beating down on all of us as we shed layers and took out our sunglasses. The park is so expansive that from the entrance we chose, you definitely couldn’t see even a third of its entirety. There were plenty of open spaces, tree groves, paths, and by the entrance we came through, Peter the Great’s childhood home, which is a beautiful wooden/log structure. 

We arrived to Kolomenskoe about 45 minutes early before our guide was to arrive, so I took the frisbee out of my backpack, and me and six others headed for some open space. We tossed for a while, and then set up a three-on-three game, with one handler playing for both teams. Since Hunter and I are the only ones that play ultimate, I was expecting this to be silly and a free for all, but everybody else was surprisingly ready to run! Within minutes we were sweaty and out of breath. People were sprinting and finding open space, and there were some highlight-reel worthy moments for sure. It was a ton of fun, and countless points and a bunch of grass stains on my jeans and sneakers later, we ended our game and headed back to meet up with the rest of the group. 

Shortly after, we were met by our guide: an older man in a grey t-shirt and brown corduroys. He had a raspy voice, which made him hard to understand, but he spoke loudly and would say something funny every once in a while. He led us through the park for two hours. In sum, the park was a green, springy wonderland full of paths, colorful flowers and beautiful views. I thought it was a great way to introduce Moscow. NATURE HUZZAH.

After lunch, Adam, Hunter, Dylan and I walked to Red Square, which ended up being about 20 minutes from our hostel. After walking through a few streets hidden beneath all the towering apartment buildings, we found ourselves in a really, really nice sector. We walked past the main bank and past fancy restaurants and designer stores. These streets continued along and around the Bolshoi Theater, which reminded me of a mini-scale Pantheon. There were open squares that were filled with a ton of people. Although it’s just the beginning of May, it seems like the tourists have arrived. Just that walk to Red Square was enough to convince me of how cool Moscow is. Walking past all the squares and the fancy stores reminded me of Paris. The thing is, in St. Petersburg, Nevsky Prospect is the main avenue with all the fancy stores, but in my opinion, it’s not that fancy or over the top. I don’t think Moscow has an equivalent to Nevsky, so instead there are a bunch of streets in different areas, obviously of a smaller caliber, that make Moscow seem much more capitalistic than it would probably like to appear. 

The walk to Red Square was also a bit unnerving. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more Russian policemen throughout my entire time in Russia than I saw throughout those three days in Moscow. Of course, we were there for May Day, and next weekend is the Victory Day celebration, so it makes sense that there were so many policemen (not to mention all the crap that is currently going on in Ukraine! I want to look into a crystal ball to see what’s going to happen SO BADLY). Policemen in Maine scare me, so you can only imagine how much I avoided making eye contact with the police and security in Moscow (except for that cute one who let me through the Kremlin security ;). They are large and basically what you would imagine a Russian police officer to look like; like someone who was going to EAT YOU WHOLE and then deport your bones on the next flight out. I was much more attentive to how loud I was speaking English. We all tried to appear as inconspicuous as possible (Hunter’s red Canadian hat was the icing on the cake). It’s weird. I’ve forgotten that hiding your American citizenship isn’t really the norm. Obviously being American isn’t a crime in Russia (yet), but you definitely don’t want to advertise it, especially with everything going on. You never know how people will react. 

Anyways, with Dylan’s memory from last semester, we made it to Red Square easily enough. We walked through GUM, Moscow’s main mall, and I suggest looking it up online. It is extravagant, way over the top, and certainly worth just looking though (we didn’t go into any of the stores but I felt slightly underdressed just walking around). Unfortunately, because of May Day, Red Square was closed. We still walked up to the make-shift gates and took in St. Basil’s Cathedral though, which, my god, is CrAzY. It’s definitely one of those moments where you’re like, “Is this even real? Am I even here right now?” Yes, yes you are. In my opinion, St. Basil’s Cathedral is a lot smaller than I imagined it to be. It’s bigger than the Church on Spilled Blood in Petersburg, but it’s not gigantic. It’s also not as... red as I expected it to be. In fact, I would almost go as far to say that it’s very much a burnt orange with some red thrown in there, but nevertheless, it’s a beautiful creation. So beautiful that apparently Ivan the Terrible had the eyes of St. Basil’s architects' gouged out after they finished contructing the cathedral so that they could never design something as beautiful after (shout out to Alice Brock! Wish you were there with me!). We circled the cathedral and sat on some grass, with St. Basil’s to our left, and killed time before dinner talking about whether or not the original James Bond small black pistol was sexy or not... (consensus: yes). 

We showed up at dinner about ten minutes late, but we found our way back to the group alright. After dinner we literally walked right next door to the circus, which I won’t spend too much time talking about. I only stayed for the first half because I heard that tigers and lions are treated terribly in the second half, but even the first half wasn’t really my thing. The woman who did stunts on a large suspended swing made me feel like I was going to have a heart attack every time she attempted a move, even though she was attached to a safety wire, and while the clown was funny, that's not really my kind of humor. There was a baby bear at the beginning, and the last act of the first half featured four enormous sea lions doing mind-blowing tricks. Damn, they’re smart! But ugh, I am so glad my parents never took me to the zoo or the circus when I was young. I will do the same if I have kids because ahh, it’s painful to watch! I can’t even think about puppies in kennels, hell no. I won’t dwell any further on animals in cages/outside their natural habitats any longer...

So a few of us left after half-time, and what do we do? We went to the Beverly Hills Diner and got 360 ruble (around $10) milkshakes. Normally I would have refused outright to pay that much for a milkshake, but I’m me, and I was in Moscow, and they looked REALLY good. I ended up getting a mint chocolate milkshake, and it was so worth it. I had to waddle back to the hostel, but I have no regrets. 

We relaxed when we got back to the hostel, and I crawled up in bed with my iPhone and wifi. I ended up in an 8 person room, filled with seven other guys, which was funny. It was just how numbers worked out I think, but we were all trying to figure out rooms down in the lobby earlier that day, and from behind a group of people I just heard Elena say, “...well then one of the girls will have to stay with all the boys...”. Acting quickly, I stood on my tip toes over the crowd of people in front of me and said, “I volunteer myself as tribute!” And that’s my story about how I ended up spending two nights in a room with seven guys in Moscow. 

And that’s all I can remember from Thursday. I’m going to take a break and get to the second half of my trip in a bit, but here’s what I have so far! Pictures soon.